The importance of public spaces in our cities | Joe Penny

So, when taken together and placed in this broader context, moves to charge children to play and to harass the homeless off the streets (to where exactly one might ask?) show themselves to be more than just pockets of egregious decision making. They point to the gradual replacement of a convivial polis , where all have the right to enjoy London’s ‘public’ spaces on more or less equal terms. With this comes an encroaching ‘airport urbanism’ – a dystopian vision of a city future defined by economic imperatives and shaped into a hierarchical socio-spatial regime of privilege, control and exclusion.